THE DONKEY SHOW | Diane Paulus & Randy Weiner’s disco-set riff on A Midsummer Night’s Dream is an hour-long work set in the Studio 54–inspired environs of Club Oberon and framed by episodes of Saturday Night Fever in which you may or may not choose to star. The dramatis personae include Dr. Wheelgood, a gold-lamé-clad Puck on roller skates; club owner Mr. Oberon, who’s out to humiliate his haughty diva girlfriend, Tytania; desperately yearning or cockily dismissive lovers Helen, Dimitri, Mia, and Sander; and a twin couple of ruffle-shirted, Afro-coiffed dudes both named Vinnie. Ingeniously double-cast, sexily supple, and screeching into headsets, they join the paying crowd (a small minority of whom occupy tables in a cabaret area that also sees action) for an immersive night of hedonism and hustle driven by the pounding beat and melodramatic passions of disco hits from the 1970s. | Oberon, Mass Ave + Arrow St, Cambridge | 617.547.8300 | Indefinitely | Curtain 8 pm Fri | 8 + 10:30 pm Sat | $25-$49

SHEAR MADNESS | The dramatis personae of the audience-participation whodunit (which is now the longest-running non-musical in American theater history, having run 29 years in Boston) continue to comb Newbury Street for the murderer of a classical pianist who lived over the unisex hair salon where the show is set. | Charles Playhouse Stage II, 74 Warrenton St, Boston | 617.426.5225 | Indefinitely | Curtain 8 pm Tues-Fri | 6 + 9 pm Sat | 3 + 7 pm Sun | $42; $31.50 with AAA discount; half-price college-student rush, one ticket per college ID, at the box office, one hour prior to curtain

Editor's Note: In a previous version of this listing, A Midsummer's Nights Dream by Contemporary Theatre of Boston was said to be directed by Vicki Shairer not Chris Cavalier. The correction has been made above.

Seduction and submission Take one spooky story. Add one spooky castle. Stir in suspenseful music and dance movement. What you get is Island Moving Co.’s Dracula.

How to tell the truth You may never have been so upset about being a twentysomething virgin that you hired a sexual surrogate for professional help, but odds are that if you had you’d just gulp and keep it to yourself.

Lovely luxury "In matters of great importance," observes young Gwendolyn, "style, not sincerity, is the vital thing."

Classic drama Theater classics are at a significant disadvantage: overfamiliarity.

Dogging it There isn't much that's cuter than little doggies, except maybe kittens and babies, but try getting them to parade in a line.

Zero at the bone A bleak expressionist fable centered on a murderous bookkeeper symbolically named Zero. Even when you throw in sexual repression, religious zealotry, a trip to Heaven, and enough dissonance to sate Stephen Sondheim, that doesn’t sound like the stuff of song and dance.

Moral surgery You know upon meeting Becky Shaw that you're in the presence of a smart, snappy writer. But you picture playwright Gina Gionfriddo as someone more akin to Theresa Rebeck than William Makepeace Thackeray.

LIGHT WAVES: BOSTON BALLET'S ''ALL KYLIÁN'' | March 13, 2013 A dead tree hanging upside down overhead, with a spotlight slowly circling it. A piano on stilts on one side of the stage, an ice sculpture's worth of bubble wrap on the other.

HANDEL AND HAYDN'S PURCELL | February 04, 2013 Set, rather confusingly, in Mexico and Peru, the 1695 semi-opera The Indian Queen is as contorted in its plot as any real opera.

REVIEW: MAHLER ON THE COUCH | November 27, 2012 Mahler on the Couch , from the father-and-son directing team of Percy and Felix Adlon, offers some creative speculation, with flashbacks detailing the crisis points of the marriage and snatches from the anguished first movement of Mahler's unfinished Tenth Symphony.